What is right is difficult to practice
When we intend to help others, the kind of cooperative relationship we have with the persons whom we intend to help is very important. Some will talk and preach to others as if they were in a higher position by saying, “You should not do such a thing,” or “Pull yourself together!”
Recently, I have often been invited to meetings concerning diabetes. There are clinical psychologists who take care of the patients with diabetes at Ikoi-no-Ie Hospital in Tenri, which is a wonderful thing. Though doctors give advice to their patients regarding diet or exercise, their advice has hardly been heeded. As a result, doctors and nurses are worrying about why their advice has not been heeded and what they should do to have their patients put the advice into practice, and, finally, they invite us psychologists.
One day, I said to doctors and nurses as follows: “You have a serious illusion. Though you may think that people will listen to you if you say something right, such an idea is a complete mistake.”
That is, for human beings, what is right is difficult to practice. Even if we were told to do a right thing with a proper reason, we cannot put it into practice immediately. Even the slightest change of mind is a serious matter for us human beings. We should understand the fact that people are hard to change.
Some of you, however, might say that you know a person who drastically changed in a single day after you had given him appropriate advice. I also experienced such a case. Such a case indicates that the person who immediately put what he had been told into practice is a marvelous one. Such a marvelous case could be found only once or twice in a decade. Accordingly, if we wish to be of any help to many others, we have to keep listening to them patiently.
A person who gets counseling is on the wane in his life. Therefore, if we wish to be of any help to a person through counseling, we should go along with him to the end and wait for the person’s conversion that would take place in due time. When we come to realize this, we might be called expert counselors who are able to listen and wait.